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‘Concours d’elegance’: 268 Posts

In January of 2014, I fired up the incense burner, cast some chicken bones, read a few tea leaves and gazed into a crystal ball to come up with a series of car hobby predictions for the coming year. A few turned out to be right on the money, while others weren’t even close; as a futurist, my career would be short-lived, but as a weatherman, I’d be atop my game. With 2015 now spread out before us, it’s time once again to hammer out five car hobby predictions for the coming year.

1) Prices for air-cooled Porsches (with the possible exception of the 914) will rise significantly over the next 12 months. In terms of price growth, air-cooled Porsche 911 and 912 models have become the new Ferraris. Like their Italian rivals, prices have gone nowhere but up in recent years, and this trend may well accelerate as the economy recovers and the auction market remains relatively hot. Don’t expect a Porsche model (even the 917) to approach the $35 million price point of Ferrari’s revered 250 GTO anytime soon, but if you’re in the market for a Porsche 912 (or even a 911 SC), there’s no time like the present to buy.

2) Japanese cars will continue to gain respect, and interest, at auction. A few decades back, almost no one considered Japanese cars collectable, but prices for high-end Japanese sports cars have grown considerably in recent years. Toyota 2000GT models now routinely sell in the million-dollar range, with Mazda Cosmo models trading hands for a quarter-million dollars. A two-door “Hakosuka” Nissan Skyline GT-R sold for $242,000 last summer, and that car was never even sold on these shores. As prices for these uber-desirable models grow, look for a trickle-down effect to occur on more pedestrian models, such as the Datsun 510 sedan and unmolested examples of third-generation (FD) Mazda RX-7s. Overall, I expect to see a much larger Japanese car presence at auction in 2015.

3) The automotive industry will continue to be plagued by recalls. As consumers get more litigious, and as cars grow ever more complex, automakers will be forced to err on the side of caution when it comes to safety defects, and recalls will continue to plague manufacturers. While 2014 will go down as the year of GM’s ignition switch recall, or the Takata airbag recall, 2015 will very likely see similar recall-related scandals aplenty. Components need to meet certain specifications to be chosen by automakers, but they must also prove to be cost-effective.

Has the concours reign of cars like this 1934 Packard 1108 Twelve Dietrich Convertible Victoria passed? Photo by author.

4) Look for postwar cars to capture more wins on the concours d’elegance circuit. Last year’s Pebble Beach Best in Show win by a 1954 Ferrari 375 MM Scaglietti coupe was no fluke, but a sign that the winds of concours glory may be shifting away from prewar cars. Blame it on a changing demographic, which (potentially) sees cars built after World War II as both more interesting and more relevant. Will this have an impact on pricing of pre-war cars? Eventually, but probably not in 2015.

5) Don’t expect big growth or a big decline in the auction market. From 2012 to 2013, revenue growth in the top-ten cars sold at auction rose by over 63-percent, while from 2013 to 2014, this growth was a more sustainable eight percent. Barring any major changes to world financial markets, expect a similar performance in 2015, and I’ll go out on a limb by predicting the top-10 sales at auction in 2015 will total $165 million, a growth of just over eight percent.

So what do you do next once you’ve won just about every major concours event possible? If you’re Joseph Cassini, well, you just start a new concours, and he will do exactly that next October in New Jersey.

But Cassini’s drive to start a new concours event doesn’t appear to come from any dissatisfaction with the current concours landscape or intent to add a few more trophies to his awards case. Rather, he said he sees a shortage of concours events in the tri-state area. “There’s nothing in New Jersey, and Greenwich is a different kind of concours than what we’re planning,” Cassini said.

For the first year, Cassini said he’s planning a show that leans more toward pre-war cars with a focus on the elegant coachbuilt-era cars. Still, he said what he’s envisioning isn’t necessarily concours traditional. “We want something unique,” he said. “We don’t want to smash the mold, but maybe we’ll tweak it a little.”

He also said the Edison Concours will succeed where other New York City-area concours events have failed because of the location. “The National Park Service has agreed to let us use the Edison grounds (that is, Glenmont, located in Llewellyn Park, New Jersey) free of charge, so we have no line item cost there, and the Park Service also has a small army of park rangers that can help us put on the event as volunteers,” he said.

Glenmont, where Edison lived most of his life, also houses Edison’s laboratory, where he pioneered motion pictures and audio recording, and his garage, where a number of his cars – including his Ford Model T and his Locomobile converted from steam to electric power – are still housed.

Cassini, along with the concours’s chief judge, Sally Perkins, and the rest of the event’s organizers, are currently selecting cars and featured classes and hope to have those finalized by early next year.

The inaugural Edison Concours d’Elegance will take place the weekend of October 16-18. For more information, visit EdisonConcours.org.

Though organizers of both described their shows as successful, two major concours events in the Midwest will not return to the calendar for 2015.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway‘s Celebration of Automobiles, which was initially conceived as a part of the speedway’s slate of centennial celebrations in 2011, remained a part of the speedway’s May schedule through this year, but speedway president Doug Boles said that putting on the new Grand Prix of Indianapolis, which first ran last year, has essentially taken precedence over the Celebration for 2015.

“The Celebration of Automobiles was successful that first year and we enjoyed it, so we kept it on, but the biggest factor in canceling it is its timing,” he said. “With the Grand Prix, it’s logistically pretty difficult to execute it in a weekend when we have tens of thousands here for another event. We just couldn’t figure out how to fit both in that same weekend. The Celebration was a very nice event – it was very complementary to our 2011 message – but our core is racing cars and race events.”

The Speedway’s vintage race in June will continue as before. Boles said that Speedway officials will try to rethink the Celebration and possibly bring it back in the future, but for now they have no plans to do so.

Photo courtesy Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens.

Meanwhile, the Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens in Akron, Ohio, earlier this month announced that it would no longer put on the Stan Hywet Concours d’Elegance. The Stan Hywet Concours, held on the grounds of Goodyear Tire co-founder Frank A. Seiberling’s 65,000-square-foot mansion, tapped concours veteran and Hemmings Classic Car columnist David Schultz as its executive director, and gathered someinteresting cars for this year’s inaugural show, but Stan Hywet organizers said they too found it difficult to reconcile the event with others on its schedule.

“We are pleased that it was successful and well-received, but have determined that producing an event of this size and scope, in addition to our five existing signature events, exceeded our sustainable capacity to support it,” said Linda Conrad, Stan Hywet executive director, in a press release.

The Hemmings Motor News Concours d’Elegance, presented by Gullwing Motor Cars and sponsored by Chubb Collector Car Insurance, has announced the featured marques for its ninth-annual extravaganza, to be held on September 25-27, 2015, in the picturesque Saratoga Spa State Park adjacent to the Saratoga Automobile Museum in Saratoga Springs, New York. As has become tradition, the selections will celebrate notable anniversaries and icons of American and European motoring, as well as an additional noteworthy automobile.

The first of six special classes highlights Ford’s Thunderbird in commemoration of the model’s 60th anniversary. Introduced as “A new kind of sports car” for 1955, the two-seat roadster was advertised thereafter as a “personal car,” while contemporary media touted its ability to complete against Chevrolet’s Corvette. After its 1958 redesign, the Thunderbird quickly came to symbolize the growing personal luxury-car market. The class will showcase multiple generations of the T-Bird through 1971.

1930 Packard Speedster Roadster. Photo by Matthew Litwin.

Hemmings will also observe the 50th anniversary of Chevrolet’s famed Mark IV “big-block” engines. Introduced during the 1965 model year, the new high-performance 396-cu.in. “Turbo-Jet” V-8 debuted in the Corvette, with availability in full-size models and the special Z16-option Chevelle also rolling out that year. The next year would see the vaunted 427-cu.in. version, and later, for 1970, the 454. Although the Mark IV was eventually installed outside the realm of passenger cars, it will forever be associated with muscular Chevelles, Camaros, Corvettes and Chevy’s full-size fleet that will be on display at the concours.

1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL. Photo by Daniel Strohl.

Other widely recognized icons of automotive history will be showcased as well, including the Mercedes-Benz 300SL “Gullwing” Coupes and the Roadsters that followed. Introduced in 1954, the German sports car was a marvel of engineering and graceful design that was proven on Europe’s toughest race tracks. The road-going editions were highly exclusive when new and endure as treasured collector cars today.

Likewise, Packard—introduced in 1899—was an early automotive symbol of social success, its achievement propelled by advanced engineering and luxurious appointments, further bolstered by the exquisite craftsmanship of custom coachbuilders throughout the Twenties and Thirties and its proliferation into multiple price brackets through the Fifties.

1953 Hudson Hornet Hollywood. Photo by Mark McCourt.

Hudson will also be honored. The Detroit-based manufacturer released its first cars in 1910 and quickly established itself as a swift and durable performer by winning a variety of speed and endurance contests in its first decade of production. Its competitive prowess was reinforced in the early Fifties with Twin-H power in the same “step-down” models that introduced the first modern form of unit-body construction.

Following the popular class of fire trucks from our 2014 event will be a class devoted to the police car. Since their acceptance by law enforcement as an effective means of serving and protecting our communities, police cruisers have been intertwined with automotive society. As time has marched on, many retired examples have become emblematic of their respective eras, and are steadily gaining interest as collector cars. We will be paying homage to factory-produced patrol cars from their inception through 1990.

1956 Ford Thunderbird. Photo by Mark McCourt.

The featured marques will be joined by our traditional classes, headlined by Full Classics, as well as American open/closed models, American Muscle cars, European cars, Vintage Trucks and Preservation vehicles. If you would like to have your vehicle considered for this event, please send photos and a brief write-up about it to Hemmings Motor News Concours, Attn: Matthew Litwin, 222 Main Street, Bennington, Vermont, 05201, or by email at concours@hemmings.com.

More information about the 9th Annual Hemmings Motor News Concours d’Elegance will be forthcoming at Hemmings.com/Event/Concours. A portion of the proceeds benefits the non-profit educational programs at the Saratoga Automobile Museum. To learn more, visit SaratogaAutoMuseum.org.

The air in the Alsace region of France must be filled with creative ions that make car designers think different. This German-border town was home to Bugatti, creator of truly distinctive sports cars, and Mathis, one of France’s largest car companies after the Big Three—Citroen, Peugeot and Renault. To think this odd-looking three-wheeler, known as the VL333, was created back in 1942 proves just how creative and ahead of the times Mathis really was.

Imagine, if you will, this car’s shape stretched out a bit. What you would be looking at would be close to the shape of many of today’s cars. Aerodynamically, the stylists at Mathis were clearly on the right track, but unfortunately the French Government didn’t have the same vision and refused Mathis its much needed access to supplies to build the car.

In 1946, this Mathis was displayed at the Paris Auto Show, but you no longer have to travel across the Atlantic to see it up close. Today, this prototype resides in Pinellas Park, Florida, at the fascinating Tampa Bay Auto Museum. I came upon the car last month at the Lake Mirror Classic car show in Lakeland, Florida, where it was surrounded by spectators throughout the day.

According to the placard in front of the car, it stated: The VL333 is built from 20-gauge aluminum sheetmetal. “The body is welded together with nearly 6,000 weld points. There is no chassis, it is a bubble. The engine is a flat-twin 700cc, and the car is front-wheel drive with a fully independent suspension. Only 9 prototypes were made during the war from 1940 to 1945; they were hidden from the Germans, as any work on automobiles for the civilian sector was forbidden. This car is the only survivor.”

Introduced at the New York Auto Show in January of 1933, the Pierce-Arrow Silver Arrow was promoted with literature reading, “It gives you in 1933 the car of 1940.” Indeed, the car looked like nothing else on the market at the time, and sold for a price 25 percent higher than a Cadillac Fleetwood V-16 when America was in the grip of the Great Depression. With just five examples ever constructed (and three known to survive), the Pierce-Arrow Silver Arrow was hardly a commercial success, yet elements of its design did predict the future of automotive styling; next January, one of these will appear at the second-annual Arizona Concours d’Elegance.

Purchased by Studebaker in 1928, Pierce-Arrow needed a halo car to draw affluent buyers into showrooms, regardless of the state of the economy. Designer Phil Wright was given the unenviable task of creating a car that couldn’t be ignored, and the result was the Silver Arrow. Using wind tunnel modeling to help create the car’s shape, the Silver Arrow featured a host of forward-thinking designs. Headlamps were integrated into the sculpted front fenders, which sat flush with the body instead of protruding into the wind. Running boards were eliminated, and to improve airflow, door handles were tucked into sculpted pockets and sidemounts were hidden in compartments located aft of the front wheels. Rear fenders were skirted and tapered for improved aerodynamics, but the Silver Arrow’s most distinctive feature was its fastback rear, with an integrated trunk, that utilized an all-steel roof and emphasized the car’s futuristic look.

The same Silver Arrow during its time in the Imperial Palace collection. Photo by Daniel Strohl.

Power came from a front-mounted, 462-cu.in., 175-horsepower L-head engine, which (in conjunction with the car’s wind-cheating shape), delivered a claimed top speed of 115 MPH. Though plans initially called for the Silver Arrows to be rear-engined, this idea was ultimately scrapped in the name of expediency; instead of using an all-new chassis, the five Silver Arrows built were constructed upon a modified version of the 139-inch wheelbase 1236 chassis. Remarkably, the first Silver Arrow progressed from drawing to finished product in just three months.

It was never clear if the five Silver Arrows built were intended as concept cars (which would have scooped the Buick Y-Job, often considered the first concept car, by five years) or as elite, hand-built production cars, but the truth probably lies somewhere in between these two extremes. Assembly line workers were hand-picked to build the Silver Arrow, which succeeded in once again drawing attention to the Pierce-Arrow brand. To capitalize on this, the company produced a mass-market namesake in 1934 and 1935, but these Silver Arrows were conventional in appearance and powered by an inline eight-cylinder engine.

Photo by Daniel Strohl.

The car to be shown in Arizona carries engine number 360007, and is currently owned by the Academy of Art University Automobile Museum, located in San Francisco, California. For nearly 20 years, it was part of the Harrah’s collection in Reno, Nevada; and under the stewardship of William Harrah, the Silver Arrow received a full restoration in 1966 and a repaint in the 1980s. In the years since, it’s spent time in the Imperial Palace collection and the Blackhawk collection, and was sold by Barrett-Jackson in 2012 for a price of $2.2 million. The sale represented the first time since 1973 that a Silver Arrow changed hands at auction, and even private sales of the three remaining cars are a particularly rare occurrence.

The second-annual Arizona Concours d’Elegance will take place on January 11, 2015, on the grounds of the Arizona Biltmore Resort in Phoenix. For additional information, visit ArizonaConcours.com.

Fifteen-year-old show coverage? Sure, why not, especially when it’s Richard Lentinello’s look (in SIA #199, February 2004) at the 2003 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance – specifically of the special classes the concours put together that year to celebrate Ford’s centennial, including pre-war coachbuilt Fords, GT40s, and woodies. While Ford products – particularly Lincolns – have before and since found their way to the Pebble Beach show field, this was the Blue Oval’s chance to shine at the world’s most prestigious car show.

Paul Doerring had many passions in life – jazz, tennis, and psychology among them – but cars, and particularly post-war cars, drove him to establish the event that would go on to become the Hilton Head Island Concours d’Elegance. Following his death in May, the organizers of the concours decided to establish a special founder’s award in Doerring’s name, and the inaugural edition of the award, appropriately enough, went to a 1957 1958 Studebaker Golden Hawk.

Positioned high atop the Studebaker lineup, where the Speedster formerly roosted, the Golden Hawk in its first year ran the Packard Clipper Custom’s 352-cu.in. V-8 under its hood, a heavy engine, but one capable of 275 horsepower at a time when Studebaker’s lighter V-8 could only manage a little more than 200 horsepower. That would change, however, in 1957 when Packard stopped making its own engines and figured out how to extract 275 horsepower from the Studebaker 289-cu.in. V-8 using a Paxton VS-57 supercharger. That year the Golden Hawk also sprouted tall fins to go with its Mercedes-grille styling, giving it a much flashier appearance.

Considered by concours judges as the event’s “most outstanding post-war car,a genre of car that Paul personally loved,” the black-and-gold 1957 1958 Golden Hawk belonging to Mark James of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, took this year’s Paul Doerring Founder’s Award.

Best of Show at this year’s Hilton Head Island Concours d’Elegance went to the 1938 Bugatti Type 57C coupe owned by Richard Workman of Windmere, Florida. Just a month before, the same Bugatti took best in show at the Lake Mirror Classic in Lakeland, Florida. People’s Choice at Hilton Head went to a 1929 Chrysler Model 75 dual-cowl phaeton.

For more information on the Hilton Head Island Concours d’Elegance, visit HHIConcours.com.

Ron Garner has a taste for the unusual, as demonstrated by his four-plus decades of Morgan ownership. While his current collection includes both three- and four-wheelers, none stands out in a crowd quite like his restored 1930 Morgan Super Aero trike with a custom-built van body, affectionately dubbed the Porta-Pub for its built-in beverage-dispensing apparatus. Ron brought his one-of-a-kind Morgan to the 2014 Hemmings Motor News Concours d’Elegance (where he took second place in the Prewar European class), and his rig proved to be among the most popular cars on the show field.

Ron, starting the Matchless V-Twin to the delight of the crowd.

In the early 1970s, while still a graduate student in Los Angeles, Ron acquired his first Morgan. Fortunately, the car was not a pillar of reliability, which introduced Ron to a cast of characters in the Southern California Morgan community, including Gerry Willburn. It also showed him the diversity of Morgan vehicles, but one in particular stuck with him: A British auto parts delivery van built upon a 1930 Morgan Super Aero, powered by a 42-hp, 1,000 cc Matchless V-Twin, shifted through a two-speed transmission.

42 horsepower to move 850 pounds sounds reasonable enough.

The van body was the creation of Alexander Fraser, who started an auto parts business in Purton, Wiltshire, England, during the 1960s. To handle the Morgan’s increased weight, Fraser replaced the original AJS engine with a 42-horsepower Matchless MX4 V-Twin, added stouter front wheels and hubs from a later-production three-speed Morgan and fitted hydraulic brakes to the front wheels.

Equipped with many parts from his own catalog, the Morgan served as a rolling billboard for Fraser’s vintage parts business. Not content, or perhaps financially unable, to sell from a high street shop, Fraser fitted a trailer hitch to the Morgan and took his wares on the road throughout England, bravely towing a four-wheel gypsy caravan behind his distinctive trike.

An in-period image of the Morgan towing the gypsy caravan. Photo courtesy MadAboutMorgans.

Fraser and the Morgan parted ways in 1970, and by 1972 the van had hopped the Atlantic and crossed the continent, winding up in Southern California. Fast-forward to 2006, when Ron and his wife Kathi, now living in Hull, Massachusetts, ran into old friend Gerry Willburn at a Morgan gathering in Maine.

Somewhere along the line, Willburn, still in Southern California, had become the third American owner of the Super Aero van, which lay disassembled in the midst of a long-forgotten restoration project. Despite this obvious obstacle, Kathi knew how much her husband still wanted the Morgan, and wasted no time brokering a deal with Gerry to buy the boxes of parts that made up the van.

The Morgan during its years with Alexander Fraser. Photo courtesy MadAboutMorgans.

After shipping the crated Morgan from California to Massachusetts, a serious restoration effort began in 2007. Lost over the years was the Morgan’s radiator, which necessitated the laborious task of building one from scratch, complete with a newly fabricated radiator surround. The bonnet had to be recreated as well, as did the trike’s ash wood body frame, long since damaged by insects and wood rot. The effort would take four years to complete, and the initial end result was a conventional “beetle back” 1930 Morgan three-wheeler.

The van body, which remained in remarkably good shape over the decades, was repainted and fitted to the Morgan circa 2012. With no need to peddle auto parts, and with a daughter and son-in-law who brew beer, the choice of what to do with the van seemed obvious: Mount a few five-gallon kegs, cool them with dry ice, install taps below the suitably appropriate portrait of Queen Victoria and turn the van into a “Porta Pub” for friends, relatives and concours-goers to enjoy. (Editor’s note: On the day of the 2014 Hemmings Concours d’Elegance, the taps were dispensing apple cider and iced tea. At least that’s what Ron told us.)

Queen Victoria, looking less than amused.

Ron admits to driving the Morgan on a regular basis, though he hasn’t tested its claimed top speed of 85 MPH and won’t tow a trailer, despite the existing hitch. As Ron said to us, “Even without the trailer, it barely stops,” and Ron’s not one to press his luck. It took him more than three decades to land this particular Morgan in his garage, and another four years to get it restored; rebuilding it again isn’t on Ron’s bucket list.

Among the other automotive anniversaries that will be marked in 2015 is the 60th anniversary of Sir Stirling Moss’ towering, record-shattering victory for Mercedes-Benz in the 1955 running of the Mille Miglia, in partnership with the late motoring journalist Denis Jenkinson. That has prompted the organizers of the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance to reprise their inaugural event by bringing Sir Stirling back next year as honoree during the event’s 20th anniversary, scheduled to take place next March 13-15.

Moss and Jenkinson behind the wheel of the Mercedes W196 300SLR at the 1955 Mille Miglia.

Sir Stirling is widely known as not just a British knight of the realm but also as a patriot, who preferred to run cars from his homeland in Grand Prix racing. His honor as a sporting gentleman was cemented forever in 1958, when he publicly lobbied for Mike Hawthorn to avoid a minor penalty, thereby assuring that Hawthorn won the World Driving Championship that year despite Hawthorn’s single win as opposed to Sir Stirling’s four. The former equestrian star is thus considered the greatest, most heroic driver to have never won a Formula 1 championship.

A young Stirling Moss poses with the OSCA he drove to victory at Sebring in 1954.

He did battle with Fangio, Collins, Hawthorn, Hill and other greats before a harrowing accident at Goodwood in 1962 that largely ended his Grand Prix career. Since then, Sir Stirling has been a beloved ambassador of the sport; a survivor of its most deadly era. One of the world’s truly great car events, Amelia Island takes place in northeast Florida at the famed namesake Ritz-Carlton resort, typically drawing more than 300 premium road and race cars. In 2015, that lineup will include a 20-car class of cars that Sir Stirling personally raced. For more information, visit AmeliaConcours.org.